Facebook Stops Serving Its ‘Lite’ Version

Less than a year after launching a streamlined version of its site, which was designed for new users “looking to start off with a more simple experience,” Facebook says it’s no longer supporting the product. In a message on its Facebook profile, the company says it “learned a lot from the test of a slimmed-down site” but that users will now be redirected to Facebook.com.

When it launched Lite in August, Facebook said the site was specifically designed for users outside the U.S. However, there was speculation that Lite — which looked strikingly like Twitter — was in fact a competitive play. The reasoning: Rather than continue to introduce Twitter-like features to Facebook and risk alienating existing users, Facebook could relegate those features to its Lite version and in the process create a direct Twitter-challenger. That obviously did not end up being the case. The company, however, won’t say why it’s pulling the product. But with Facebook’s developers’ conference starting off tomorrow, it’s possible that there’s some alternate release in the works.